Tag: Gary Monk Health

I try to get along to as many London Quantified Self Meetups as I can. Most of the presentations are very interesting. The discussion of peoples unique experience in personal experimentation is usually fascinating (If like me you are interested in that sort of thing!)

What is great, especially if you can’t make a meeting, is that all talks are recorded. Ok you miss out on the interaction, questions and networking but it is still a great resource. Thanks to Ken, one of the organisers for making this happen.

The archive of Videos and Presentations can be found here. I would certainly recommend having a look.

And of course in the true spirit of self promotion I have embedded my recent quantified self video and presentation below 🙂 Of course I hope it is interesting, but if not you have plenty of others to choose from! Maybe see you at the next #QS Meet Up 🙂

Recently I presented a workshop on Social Media to a global assortment of patient advocacy groups.

An incredibly enriching experience, I walked away feeling I had learned even more than I imparted.

And that for me was a good thing – I loved hearing the groups share their successes and how they search for opportunities where Social Media can enhance the support they can give to patients.

The most significant thing that struck me was their incredible sense of purpose .

When you consider big companies, the goal is often ‘Just Do Social Media’, the sexy tactic waiting for a strategy.

These guys had an abundance of drive and clear goals, with Social Media a potential vehicle.

They were not interested in a Social Media project for the sake of it – it needed to be aligned with a greater purpose.

The group shared some incredible examples of their work, through committed individuals bound together as a team.

One such example was a change to one countries national policy in terms of reduction on medication copayment . Social Media clearly has the power to support such efforts.

It was interesting to hear some of the things that the group wanted from Social Media.

Enhancing their offline advocacy and public policy initiatives

Establishing more meaningful and enduring connections with patients and other important stakeholders

Planning the use of Social Media, to be able to respond quickly yet in the most appropriate manner

Helping patients to understand as much as possible about their condition and its management

Generally making sure they are using Social Media in the best possible way

‘So what is Social Media?…. Er let me think about that for a while’

It was great to hear this feedback directly from those at the front line rather than the usual insipid market research presentations.

The use of Social Media varied widely amongst the groups, so there is clearly a big opportunity to magnify the impact of their campaigns by using Social Media.

Indeed many were new to Social Media, but others were particularly established, caring for vibrant and burgeoning online communities. These communities offer mutual support and work towards a common purpose.

My biggest personal challenge was minding my language, not so much the expletives, rather speaking at the right pace, to a group of non-native English speakers.

I had to restrain myself from going into a 450 word per minute frenzy on this exciting topic and not peppering my vocabulary with technical and business jargon. The feedback was I managed this, although it required some serious concentration.

So I learned that objective setting for the patient advocacy groups is not a priority, as they are pretty clear on this already.

Areas they may need further support on are:

Understanding the tools available to understand the broader digital landscape in their therapy area

Aligning ‘traditional’ advocacy and public policy initiatives with Digital and Social Media

How to measure success and understanding what Social Media has contributed.

To be fair these are my assumptions not their requests – with the above recommendations I am probably guilty of self-marketing as I would love to be involved in more of these events!

Almost immediately I felt a slight sense of frustration and embarrassment.

These feelings were not evoked by the ‘egocentric’ act of ‘Self Googling’ (honest), I mean everyone does that…don’t they?

The frustration was that Google perpetually (ahem yes I checked repeatedly) self corrected, assuming I was actually searching for another Gary Monk, (actually spelt with 2r’s and captain of Premier League football team Swansea City)

I don’t even play football!

This meant I had to click through to the ‘right’ Gary Monk every time.

The acute embarrassment was not created, by finding something I would rather not see about myself online, rather by noticing that once I had clicked through to the ‘real’ Gary Monk, my most recent blog post was August last year.

Well I have been busy etc etc, but still my gut reaction was that I needed to post something, anything. Just write absolutely anything, at least with a revised date it will look more current!

The goal (no footy pun intended) I immediately set myself was for this blog site to be number 1 in Google and of course for Google to no longer assume ‘gary monk’ was a typo in favour of the 2R version.

I have cheekily employed some immediate tactics in this post. Not wanting to help the other Gary Monk (with 2Rs) in the search engine stakes I have refused to write his name correctly anywhere in this blog, referring to him henceforth as 2Rs. I have ‘generously’ used the name Gary Monk throughout this post, even in the blog title and alt tags of the images (in case you didn’t notice) in the hope that this increased ‘keyword density’ might appeal to Google when Gary Monk (1R) is typed into the search field (most likely by Gary Monk himself)

Maybe my blog will not have the gravity to usurp the captain of a mid-table premiership footy team, but it will make this Gary Monk feel like he is doing something positive towards his goal. Also I am not against 2Rs owning his 2R space but would prefer his gets his online hands off the 1R territory.

Now I am not entirely comfortable with peppering Gary Monk throughout this blog post especially resorting to speaking about myself (that’s Gary Monk to be clear) in the 3rd person in order to shoehorn a few more gratuitous Gary Monks in there, but it is a means to an end. (although I am not sure which of the 50 shades of Grey Hat SEO this falls under)

Longer term I have also committed to writing regular blog posts to meet my objectives of being Google’s preferred Gary Monk and getting this site to the top of the rankings.

After some reflection, I realised I have a goal of personal Google domination and at least the semblance of a plan to get there (admittedly it may need some work!) but I have not explored my purpose for doing this?

Is it ego driven? to generate some discussion and debate? provide useful content to the relevant online communities? for fun? to generate leads for my business? to increase my online presence and impact?

Any one of these is ok, if I am clear about it. I should of course establish success metrics where appropriate, for example being able to quantify business leads gained (or possibly increase in head circumference size for the more self-indulgent purposes)

However this quick fire reaction, actually means I am actually guilty of what I often challenge Pharma on, in the course of my work. The knee-jerk “We need to do this now and this is how we will do it” without exploring the purpose and what real success actually looks like.

‘Let us try to optimise our websites for search’ without considering whether any of our target patients or doctors will actually go there.

If we do get them to our website, what will they actually do differently as a result, what call to actions are in place to both drive and measure these behavioural shifts?

The list goes on… ‘we need to ‘do a social media campaign’, create a series of mobile apps, maximise hits on our site…’

These objectives are often formed without understanding how our audience or company will actually benefit as a result.

So then, I need to go back to defining my purpose, or simply wait for 2Rs to retire from professional football.